HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

Be safe this holiday season, folks.  And enjoy your family/friends/random eccentric characters that seasonally pop into your life for unexpected joy (and/or insanity).
Hopefullly I can get my rear in gear and produce my yearly “Best of” edition – with all the thrills and chills of 2008.
And thank you for always supporting, reading, scratching your head [...]

Thought provoking: The future of In Game Branding

Prolonging The Time A Consumer Is Willing To Spend With A Brand

The typical advertising budget for a medium sized company can be larger than the budget for a next-gen game production. As the games industry keeps gaining focus from the public and other business areas, advertising agencies are not late to follow the trend.
Advertising agencies [...]

What the Young Want

This was the year my son’s Christmas list really plugged in.
His requests to Santa included a Nintendo DS, several games, plus all the electronic trimmings. He’s already got an iPod, and now wants accessories, starting with dog-shaped speakers that move to the music. About the only thing he hasn’t asked for yet [...]

Nickelodeon The Big Online Destination

NEW YORK, Dec 16, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — Nickelodeon Kids and Family Group’s portfolio of digital sites will close 2008 in first place among all kid and family web destinations, based on its monthly average of 131 million visits and total of 2.4 billion minutes in time spent (source: comScore U.S. Media Metrix). [...]

Welcome to the Weeeest Siiiiide

Score one for the left coast. Henry Jenkins, professor of literature and director of comparative media studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will take a joint position in the USC Annenberg School for Communication and the USC School of Cinematic Arts.The move, scheduled for July 2009, bolsters USC’s bragging rights as a West Coast [...]

Avatar: The Last Airbender news

Fans of Nickelodeon’s animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender have been awaiting news on casting for M. Night Shyamalan’s live-action movie adaptation of the show … and today is that day.  Entertainment Weekly is reporting that Shyamalan cast at least some of the characters for the movie, which is titled The Last Airbender.  At [...]

Poignant yet slightly hilarious?

Fights among guests are an issue for all restaurants, but security experts say they pose a particular problem for Chuck E. Cheese’s, since it is designed to be a haven for children. Law-enforcement officials say alcohol, loud noise, thick crowds and the high emotions of children’s birthday parties make the restaurants more prone to disputes [...]

Izzy’s Rant about Obvious VW Depth

Backgrounds should NEVER look like backgrounds/backdrops, etc. (If you know what that means, then you’re ahead of the battle)
Locations in a virtual world should never feel cold or empty.
CONTENT CONTEXT, PEOPLE.
Obvious without Insult.
However you feel when making the world ABOUT the craft – then that’s what your audience will feel at the max – if [...]

More on: Little Big Planet’s UGC vs. IP

The quirky-cute and much anticipated UGC-focused PS3 game Little Big Planet has now been on the market for about a month (it’s currently #13 on VGChartz, which is awesome for a PS3 game), and by all accounts players are busying themselves making their own levels with the game’s innovative player-generated-level design feature (you can check [...]

AOL’s Parents of Gamers site

Parents hit with pre-holiday pleas for “Grand Theft Auto IV” and other hot video games have a new source for sorting out which are appropriate with the launch of PlaySavvy.com from AOL.
A complement to the Web portal’s game-focused properties, the new site offers parents a guide to games, from ratings and reviews to connecting with [...]